The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Digital versatile discs, sometimes also referred to as digital video discs (DVDs), have become as popular as VCR tapes and may soon replace VCRs. The manufacturers of DVDs envision the DVD to replace not only VCR tapes, but CDs, laserdiscs, and video game cartridges. Currently, DVDs offer a platform that can store up to 15.9 GBs of audio and video (A/V) data on a single disc. However, a typical recordable DVD can only store approximately 4.7 GBs of data.
More recently, digital video recorders (DVRs) have emerged in the marketplace. There are a number of technology trends that are continuing to expand the opportunities for DVR functionality. These trends, whose initial existence directly led to the invention of the DVR, include the increasing density of gates on semiconductor media and the increasing density of magnetic storage on hard drive platters.
As content broadcasters transition to pure digital broadcasts, the entire pathway from the broadcast station to the viewer will be digital. DVRs are on the forefront of offering digital storage and display solutions to the viewer. DVRs offer the viewer increased control of the storage and playback of recorded broadcast programs. The user has the ability to pause and rewind through live broadcast programs which was never feasible using VCRs.
Even though the hard disks in a DVR can be very large (hundreds of gigabytes), the ability to backup and play stored program material using a DVD player/recorder was not considered until recently. This combination offers the DVR user the advantage of creating a large library of program material stored on DVDs. One problem is how to store content onto a DVD that may be received in a non-DVD compliant format. Another problem is how to store content onto a DVD in a manner that allows a user to use the functionality provided by DVRs. For example, when a DVD that conforms to the DVD standard is played, it is very difficult to perform special effects such as fast forward and rewind through the program material with the same granularity as with program material stored on a DVR. Moreover, it is impossible to go to arbitrary positions within the DVD content without having to perform multiple reads of the content. Each read contributes a high latency. To perform the same type of DVR special effects on a standard DVD player requires expensive reads of sections of the DVD disc and the granularity would not be up to the standards of a DVR. In view of the foregoing, there is a need for an approach for creating DVDs containing A/V content that addresses the problems above.